Second-Class City Is First-Class Hellhole, of Traffic

A hellish and desolate landscape of “freeways”—an ironic name, for they only serve to imprison you in an idling, air-conditioned bubble as life slowly passes you by.

The City of Angels? Yeah right. Angels of what—traffic? A dead body, splayed out on a highway, intestines askew, smashed flat by semi truck after semi truck, a consequence of a childish desire to make a “snow angel” gesture in Los Angeles, California? That is the devastating conclusion that must be drawn from a new study that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Los Angeles has the worst traffic in the entire United States of America.

It also has the worst sense of noble rectitude.

Los Angeles, a city adorned with leather pants, sweating from its metaphorical butt crack—the San Andreas fault, ladies and gentlemen. Mother Nature will have the final chuckle, I assure you.

Los Angeles, a city that everyone says is nice but you can’t see it because you spend 81 hours per year stuck in traffic, a “drive time” DJ’s voice yammering in your ear until its whining drone becomes a mantra to you, the underlying voice of this sprawling collection of suburbs knitted into an unlikely metropolis, Los Angeles, full of people who look better than you, and friends who live on the other side of town that you will therefore never see, and amazing Korean taco places on the other side of town that you mean to go to one day, but never will, because you already spend 81 hours per year in traffic and is it really worth it? Might as well just sit in the yard. Hey, you have a yard—congratulations.

The noble cities of the Eastern seaboard boast the institutions that built this great country. Nice yard though.

Los Angeles, a city viewed through the window of an automobile, a city that looks like cars to the left, and cars to the right, and cars to the back, and cars to the front. Will we ever really learn what Los Angeles looks like? Will we ever get a chance to sample all of this sunny burg’s alleged charms? Perhaps in 81 hours. Until then, we idle. Trapped.